that is, always the same thing. Why would the figures always balance
each other, she wondered wearily? Life was one long sum in algebra--or
subtraction: the signs changed, the quantities cancelled, and--X was
zero. Everything seemed to be _known_; so distinct and matter-of-fact.
When she married John Gwynne, she had loved him--passionately; but also
reasoningly. She had taken into consideration that the passion would
dim, but that a certain comfortable comradeship would take its place.
The passion had dimmed; the comradeship had taken its place. And the
illusions which Lucia had not possessed had remained unattacked. What
was there then to quarrel with? Her house, from which she had
anticipated as much satisfaction as care, had given her the two in equal
proportion. Her child, who she had known would thrill and agonize her
alike, had done both, with impartial intensity. Her art, which she had
been willing to abandon in exchange for certain other delights, had been
indeed compensated for by those delights; it had been a fair exchange
and no more. No more, for that would have been to spoil the law; to dig
unevennesses in the groove--which, for Lucia, seemed eternally straight.
“Oh!” She sat up and flung off the soft blanket that covered her. Was
there any way, was there any trick or painful art, with which to break
the relentlessness of pleasure paid for? Of happiness counter-checked?
Perhaps her mother was right--if she didn’t think so much----. But she
had to think. It was all the expression she had of a nature that had
never been able to escape from itself, for an unconscious minute.
Heavens! Lucia beat the pillows and sank down again. “If this keeps on,
I’ll go quite mad.” She had the wit to know she was half mad,
anyhow--and always had been. It was perhaps the one thing that kept her
sane. Analysts are harassed creatures. John Gwynne, who ate meat and
potatoes three times a day, and loved a good vaudeville show, did not
know of their existence.
John Gwynne was at that moment in a shop, leaving an order for new
decorations for Lucia’s rooms.
“You’ll have to push it through in a hurry,” he said anxiously. “Mrs.
Gwynne said she didn’t know when she’d be back, and that means any time.
I want something in lilac. Lilac’s her color.”
The attentive clerk showed two samples in pale mauve. “We have the
chintz to match these, Mr. Gwynne. If I might suggest, I should think
the unconventional design----”
“Sure, the unconventional’s the thing for Mrs. Gwynne! You’ve served her
for ten years, Eh, Gregg?”
“Yes, sir--” the suave clerk’s face broke into an almost natural
smile--“I was here when you brought her in to select her bridal
furnishings, ten years ago.”
“Sure!” said John Gwynne again, more slowly. “Ten years ago! George, but
time goes by, don’t it, Gregg?” He was staring out the window at the
motors tearing up and down outside.
“Well!” with a start, “the unconventional it is,--paper, hangings, and
the whole business--and look here, Gregg, rush this for me, will you?
Push it right along.”
“We certainly will, Mr. Gwynne,” the clerkly manner was not quite
restored again. Heartiness struggled with it; and--“excuse me, sir,”
said Gregg hurriedly, “but do you know I think this is the very design
Mrs. Gwynne chose when you were married--wistaria, with the pale pink
rosebuds in the border--I’m almost positive it is. It’s a piece we
didn’t carry for a number of years, and then”----
“Why, sure--sure!” said Gwynne, gazing at it. “The very thing! And then
my sister, two years later, went and put on blue--to surprise Mrs.
Gwynne--while we were in Europe. And I think it did surprise her some!”
he remembered grimly.
The clerk gave a feeble smile. “Yes, sir--blue with a silver stripe--I
remember, sir!”
“I should think you would! I told her to come down and have it changed,
but Tommy--our little boy--had the measles just then, and afterward I
got hurt in that hunting accident, and then we went to the country--and
blessed if there’s ever been a time since when she’s had so much as a
chance to think about it! That’s why now--well, see you push it through,
Gregg.”
“Indeed yes, Mr. Gwynne! Good-day, Mr. Gwynne.”
“Good-day.”
“Beats me,” added Gwynne to himself outside, “why these clerk-fellows
can’t say things as they come: ‘indeed yes’--why the Dickens should a
thing be turned hind-side to, when you can say it straight out?”
It was a point he and Lucia had not infrequently discussed--in other
denominations. Gwynne, going home to an empty house, felt he would
willingly have dropped his side, if Lucia had been there to carry hers.
“She looked tired,” he thought, sitting alone by the library fire after
dinner. “I hope her mother makes her rest. She looked regularly fagged.”
He spent the rest of the evening writing her a letter; and Tommy. In the
morning he sent Mrs. Loring a telegram. “How’s Lucia?” it said. Lucia
had been gone twenty-four hours.
“And you say you’re taken for granted!” triumphed her mother. “You think
he’s more interested in Consolidated Iron? Stuff, my dear! John Gwynne’s
forty. For a man of forty to follow his wife up with telegrams, the very
day after----”
“He might have sent it to me,” said Lucia, ungraciously.
“Oh, well!” Mrs. Loring tossed her handsome head. “If you’re determined
to be _difficile_----!”
Lucia, who was pretending to eat a strip of bacon, asked, “Did my
drawing-ink come? I ordered some sent down from town, before I
left--and a lot of Bristol-board.”
“It came,” said Mrs. Loring, looking at her uneasily. “Lucia, whatever
are you----”
“I am going to draw,” said Lucia, with a deep breath. “Ever since I was
married, I’ve never had time: first there was Tommy, and then the trip
abroad, and then Tommy’s measles, and then John’s accident, and then the
new house in the country, and--I’m going to draw, mother! For days and
days, and blissful weeks--I’m going to draw!”
Her cheeks were vivid, her eyes afire.
“Oh!” gasped Mrs. Loring, looking at her. “You--you’re going to draw.
For--weeks!”
“Yes, mother! And you can tell Ada Barker, and the Temple girls, and
whoever else comes, that their fascinations are nothing compared with
black-and-white. And if John sends telegrams asking ‘How’s Lucia?’ tell
him ‘She’s drawing!’ Do you hear? Tell him ‘She’s drawing!’”
And snatching up her precious parcel that a servant had brought, with an
excited little laugh, Lucia fairly flew upstairs. Her mother, left with
John Gwynne’s telegram, shook her head, perplexedly.
At luncheon, Lucia appeared, less gay, though still flushed and ardent
with intention. “It’s wonderful,” she said, “to have one uninterrupted
morning--to know there’s no ordering to be done, and that John won’t
come tearing home for early lunch. I really believe I shall accomplish
something--if I work,” she added, a little pucker coming between her
eyes.
After lunch, she went back to it. Mrs. Loring wished she would lie down
and rest her eyes; but she knew Lucia fairly well: she did not suggest
it. That night when Ambrose Fayerweather came to dinner, he said warmly,
“Well, well! And so the mother tells me you’re at work again, drawing!
What energy you youngsters have, to be sure!”
Lucia, who was genuinely fond of him, did not answer that she was as old
as her own grandmother, but said with a kind of enthusiasm, “Yes, isn’t
it nice! I feel as though I should really get something done.
Though--it’s rather hard, of course, starting in again, after so many
years.”
“Of mere wife-hood, eh?” Mr. Fayerweather looked at her a bit wistfully
from under his iron-grey brows. “By the way, I saw that husband of yours
the other day. They tell me he’s a man to reckon with, now. I tell
them--but you always get cross with me when I tell the truth about
yourself.”
Lucia smiled at him. And he remembered she had always been a
confoundedly pretty girl. “Dear Mr. Fayerweather, I’m never cross with
you. I’m only unconvinced.”
“Oh! very well then” (they were waiting for her mother and dinner),
“I’ll tell you: when people say to me what a splendid fellow Gwynne is,
and how successful, I say yes, but who’s backing him? _Mrs. Gwynne!_”
“Backing him?” repeated Lucia slowly.
“Why, yes. Haven’t you always furnished the brains of the
combination--the spark? My dear Lucia, we all know that delightful head
of yours works in twenty directions a minute!”
Lucia looked at him curiously. “No. It works in only two.” And they kill
each other, she started to add; but changed it to “I’m afraid neither
has ever helped John.”
“Nonsense--non--sense! Why, Gwynne was nowhere until he got married; and
since then--he’s simply soared! There’s no holding him down. Believe me,
Lucia, I hear it from men who----”
“Oh, of course he’s done well. I--I’m tremendously proud of John’s
success. But it’s his own success, Mr. Fayerweather,” Lucia said
passionately. “I haven’t contributed to the length of an idea!” The
suddenness with which it struck her, almost overwhelmed Lucia Gwynne.
“My dear,” said Ambrose, looking at her, “you--none of you--can tell
what you contribute. You’re women, aren’t you?” He glanced through the
door, at the stairs where her mother was coming down. “That’s one thing
you can’t help or evade. And--you don’t know what you contribute.”
Lucia, during dinner, thought about it. It was a new kind of thinking
for her: what she didn’t know; what she could not possibly determine;
what didn’t balance with anything else. In it, she forgot the somewhat
disheartening disclosures of the day’s work--that her technique was
laborious rather than a joy--that it was hard, impossible almost, to get
back at the end of the years; and remembered to write to Tommy. She
wondered if he had put his boots away, and if he was homesick. Funny
little freckle-faced Tommy! Two stubborn tears, like those that had
worked their way out of his brave brown eyes when he parted from her,
rose suddenly to Lucia’s. How weak she was! she told herself, the next
minute, impatiently.
But she wrote to Tommy that night, before she went to bed. And at the
end she said--instead of the caution about colds he hated so--“Mother
wishes she could kiss you good-night--really, truly good-night, little
son!” When she had sent the letter, she was inclined to be scornful of
that last bit. The foolish third person--it was only an advanced
baby-talk, that in her training of Tommy she had rigorously excluded.
Next day she worked harder than ever, and when John’s telegram came, she
did not even know it. She was upstairs, putting her eyes out drawing a
bit of lace on the gown of a gorgeous Wenzell lady. Come right, it would
not. All afternoon she toiled; got a smudge on her nose that stayed
there when Ada Barker came to tea, and a general irritability that
caused that young woman to say later, “Well, I didn’t know Lucia Gwynne
had gone off so! She’s positively untidy, and so sharp!”
That, Lucia’s mother had reason to echo during those twenty-four hours.
But mothers don’t echo, somehow. They exonerate. Mrs. Loring was kept
busy exonerating, while that bit of lace tied itself up in knots, and
haughtily refused unravelling. When in the evening John Gwynne wired
“why doesn’t Lucia write to me?” Lucia’s mother replied, “She’s drawing
a piece of lace.” When, an hour later, he demanded, “What in thunder
ails her?” Mrs. Loring wired back, “Why don’t you come and see for
yourself?”
He came.
Three days after Lucia had arrived, throwing herself down on the little
sofa, her husband followed suit. He looked extraordinarily big there.
“Where’s Lucia?” he asked instantly.
“Drawing lace,” said Mrs. Loring--about whose pretty mouth were little
lines.
“Is she mad?” demanded her husband.
“She has been--very near it.” Mrs. Loring looked intently into Gwynne’s
face. “Lucia thinks too much. You don’t give her enough to do.”
“Thinks too much--not enough to do? Why, isn’t she my wife? What should
she do, except give orders to the servants and enjoy herself? I don’t
want her to do anything!”
“Then you mustn’t be surprised,” said her mother, “if she comes off to
me and draws lace.”
“What? If she--what?”
“If she finds something to do for herself.”
“But she’s always busy--rushing about, with a thousand things to--!
That’s one reason why I was glad to have her get away: the only reason.
She looked fagged to death. And you say she hasn’t anything to do!”
“Nothing with her head. Only her arms and legs--and nerves. For Lucia
that’s not enough. If her head isn’t busied, it gets away from her,
and----”
“You tell her to come down here,” broke in John Gwynne suddenly.
“_Please!_ Tell her to come down here, and----”
Lucia appeared in the door. There were two smudges on her nose. “I
simply can’t get that wretched”--she began: then, with a gasp, “Oh!
_John!_ Why--why----”
“Hello, little girl!” John caught her, smudges and all, half way across
the room. Mrs. Loring vanished. “Are you--glad to see me?”
Lucia’s lips were buried somewhere about his ear. “But--I--I--yes,” she
murmured with difficulty. “I--was trying to draw lace.”
“Well,” said John Gwynne, “you’re going to draw a good deal bigger
things than that.” John Gwynne could act quickly in matters of
importance. “I’ve a million-dollar combine up for dicker this
week--Fayerweather and Lodge and some of the fellows are in it with
me--and it’s to do with an art collection of a regent prince who’s gone
bankrupt and who’s got to sell to pay his debts. We’re thinking of
buying; and I want your--why, Lucia, honey, what’s the matter? Sit down.
Why----”
For Lucia was crying. First, softly, then tempestuously; as though her
heart would break. John drew her down by him on the sofa, and patted her
hand. “It’s all right, honey,” he said steadily, “it’s all right. I
know--I took you by surprise, and you were tired to death, and--well,
maybe you’d better come home, Lucy.”
“Oh, John--John,” she tried to control herself, “you don’t understand.
It’s not that--it’s--John, don’t you see, I’ve tried all along to _keep
tab_ on things! I’ve put down so much on your side, and so much on mine;
and then added them up. What you gave out I gave--and they always
tallied. And at last--oh, don’t you see how dreary it got? How
worthless? But _I couldn’t stop doing it_. I was like a wound-up clock.
And so----”
“And so now you are going to begin a new column called _our_ side,” put
in John Gwynne, covering her hands. “And, Lucia! It’ll be so mixed up,
and in such big figures, you can never count ’em--my dear! And, anyhow,
we’ll be too busy. I’m going to send for Tommy--after you and I----”
with swift tenderness, he kissed her.
While Gwynne, next day, was standing with Lucia in the room hung with
the wistaria and pale rosebuds of ten years ago, Ambrose Fayerweather
was saying to Mrs. Loring, “but I thought she came to make a _long_
visit?”
“Well,” said Mrs. Loring defensively, “she stayed three days!”
X
ROGER--PLAINLY AN IDLER
“Eh bien, Marcel! and how does it go?” I asked.
“Oh, it goes, m’sieu--it goes, always. But----”
“Yes? ‘But’----?”
“Well, m’sieu” (pulling my chair out, uneasily), “it is the season of
the Americans, and--but pardon, m’sieu!”
“Don’t mind me,” I said, pouncing on the carte du jour of the Café aux
Oranges. “In Paris I am equally content as you to forget it--that I am
American. _Alors_, Marcel!--it will be hors d’œuvres variés, and then an
omelette fines herbes, and then, I think, an assiette anglaise with a
bit of salad, eh? and a Camembert, to finish.”
Marcel regarded me solemnly--consideringly--from over the wide block
rims of his glasses. “But yes, m’sieu,” he said at last, grudgingly, “I
suppose that it can go, as a breakfast. And monsieur drinks----?”
“Beer,” I was suddenly occupied with an extraordinarily pretty girl in
the orangier opposite, “demibrune, Marcel.”
“Pardon, m’sieu, demiblonde--er--I--a thousand pardons, m’sieu!”
Confused, the old fellow brought his eyes back from the same direction;
made a violent effort to blush, and hurried off, murmuring, “demibrune,
m’sieu, it is understood!”
I looked again at the girl. Even for the Café aux Oranges, where in
spring, like this, there are as many pretty girls as blossoms on the
chestnut trees above the little tables,--she was extraordinarily pretty.
And she was American. One knew that by the upholstered shoulders of the
young man and the shopping-bag of the lady, who were with her. The lady
was frowning over the menu.
“I will not come here again!” she was heard to say, in a voice with as
many corners as her shopping bag. “The second time this week--no roast
beef! I’ll not come again. It’s a cheap place.”
“But, mamma” (by straining one’s ears, one could just get the low
response of the pretty girl) “it’s a very nice place, really! And don’t
you know it is one of the very few old cafés of the Quarter--the old
French cafés--Roger told us?”
“Roger!” exploded the lady (there was no difficulty in hearing her). “If
Roger knew less about cafés, it would be a great deal better for----”
Marcel returned with the hors d’œuvres. But not before I had seen a thin
smile overtake the features of the heavy-shouldered young man.
“Who are they?” I asked Marcel, carelessly enough.
With a thump he set down the radishes. “They, m’sieu?” Scornfully, “they
are Americans who are come since m’sieu went away. While m’sieu was in
Italy they came to live in the Rue Vavin, near by. They are friends of
Monsieur Roger Elmont--_ce beau garçon!_ But mademoiselle is an
angel--but of a goodness! Only last Sunday she gave me two francs ten,
and always when she takes coffee here in the evening--but she is very
good for me.”
“And the others? The mother and brother?”
“Pah! what would you? _Canaille!_--tourists--but it is not her brother,
m’sieu. It is the _futur_ of mademoiselle, _saints dieux_!”
“Not possible! But are you sure, Marcel? How do you know?”
“Listen, m’sieu”--he lowered his voice--“m’sieu eats his crevettes, and
I shall recount to him: listen. A month ago, before one began to take
the repasts outside at Café aux Oranges, there came one evening these
three and Monsieur Roger. They are gay--but of a gaiety! They order
dinner and--_mais si!_ champagne _and_ champagne--first Monsieur Roger,
then this young man, Stuart, he calls himself, I think. This Monsieur
Stuart, of champagne he himself orders two bottles. But they are
friendly, he and Monsieur Roger; they are like brothers.
“Then--I am serving them, I and Little-John--all of a sudden something
happens. Something is said--I am out, searching their dessert, I do not
hear. But Little-John hears, and he murmurs to me, stupidly in high
voice as he always does, ‘it is the _futur_ of Mademoiselle, that one
with the made shoulders. Madame has come from telling Monsieur Roger.’
This, then, is the cause of the quick silence, and of Monsieur Roger’s
pale face, and mademoiselle’s blushes--ah, but she is beautiful,
mademoiselle; m’sieu finds her brunette! For myself, to me she seems
blonde. Such blue eyes and the skin so white, like camelia, though
certainly her hair----”
“Never mind,” I said, buttering a heel of bread, “I can see her hair.”
“But perfectly, m’sieu. I was saying, Monsieur Roger is all of a
surprise with the news. He has not known mademoiselle is engaged. But
yes, says madame with victory, since two months--since the ship in which
they came from America. This--how you say?--Chames? Chames Stuart was on
that ship. Madame is an intimate of M. Stuart’s mother. To Monsieur
Roger, madame tells with what singular air of _double entendre_, this
Chames Stuart is a man to be trusted. A _good_ man. Monsieur Roger
throws back his head and laughs--very long.
“But, m’sieu, I do not like to hear that laugh. Myself, I am foolish for
Monsieur Roger, like all the rest at Café aux Oranges, more than all the
other _garçons_ I am foolish for him. Do I not know him since he came,
poor obscure student, five years ago? But of a certainty! And that
laugh, it is not the laugh of Monsieur Roger--rich, successful, _grand
artiste_. No! it is a laugh that hides tears, suffering maybe. I do not
know. Surely it makes me regard Monsieur Roger more closely, while he
says, with what _legereté_, ‘but certainly madame! one knows that you
would give Julie to none but a good man--that you would assure yourself
as to his goodness.’
“Then, while mademoiselle and Chames Stuart sip their coffee, madame
speaks to him severely. I understand but meagerly English, m’sieu knows,
I attrap a word here and there--of girls and student balls and the gay
life of the Quartier that has embroiled Monsieur Roger. Truly, m’sieu,
he has always seemed to me a brave young man, _ce beau garçon_, not at
all a mean young man or of _mauvais sang_, like some who come here; but
he has been young, parbleu! The saints be thanked, he has been young.
Yet with that does Madame reproach him, in low tones. Monsieur Roger’s
mother, madame says, has heard of his follies but too often; her heart
is broken. ‘Nor can your success repair it,’ adds madame with harshness.
‘All Baltimore knows of your wild affairs and your mother’s shame.’
M’sieu, I do not know who is this Baltimore, but I think he must be
droll, if he is shocked at Monsieur Roger’s _folies de jeunesse_. _N’est
ce pas?_ But certainly, m’sieu--the omelette!”
When he had brought it, “M’sieu does not ennui himself? M’sieu permits
that I go on?”
“Go on,” I said--looking at the wide blue eyes of the girl in the
orangier opposite.
“That evening passes itself. I do not know why, mademoiselle--the blush
once gone--looks pale and _distraite_. She speaks quite gay and very
fast, yet--why she is sad one can but imagine. This Chames Stuart, he
is scarcely of a beauty, _hein_? A beauty like Monsieur Roger with his
black hair and his gay smile and his figure like--Dame! But I am foolish
for Monsieur Roger, all the Café knows. And he, what does he do? He says
good-night with _empressement_, formally, and hopes he may have the
pleasure of seeing these ladies again very soon. With Chames Stuart he
shakes hands--yet more formally. They separate.
“Second chapter, it is--what do you think, m’sieu? Mademoiselle and
Monsieur Roger _alone_! But of a surety! They come in one warm afternoon
and order tea--but they come inside and far over in one corner, and
mademoiselle glances about, nervously and says, ‘Oh, Roger, it is rash!
It is wrong--I ought not to have come.’ But he soothes her--_Mon Dieu_:
what a voice: what strength--what tenderness divine! The emotion a young
girl must feel for him--one can but imagine--he soothes her and tells
her it was of a necessity for him, this little hour alone with her.
“‘For I was to have married you, Julie, you know,’ he says sadly. ‘Our
mothers planned it when you were a little girl in--how you say, m’sieu?
pinafore? and I a clumsy boy in knickers. Have you forgotten?’
“‘No,’ says mademoiselle with a little sigh; ‘but--they say _you_ did.
They say--mamma and your mother too--that you forgot everything but what
you should have forgotten; that you flung your name and the reputation
of your family to the four winds, and cared for nothing but
pleasure!--and dissipation and mad gaieties. They say!’ mademoiselle
tells him with a break in her lovely voice, ‘that you aren’t fit to
marry a young girl--that you would break her heart.’
“Monsieur Roger cursed--softly, under his breath. But I, m’sieu, heard
him.
“‘Idiots!’ he mutters between his teeth. ‘Fools--prurient-minded
canaille!--to fill a child’s head with such drivel. But it’s dangerous
drivel.’ He turns to mademoiselle.--‘Listen, Julie,’ he says with what
gentleness, ‘Americans have different ideas from ours over here. _They
lead the same lives_,’ says Monsieur Roger bitterly, ‘but they have
different ideas about those lives. They take trouble to conceal. Here in
Paris, one lives as one lives,--openly. One is ashamed of
nothing,--except meanness. I,’ says Monsieur Roger proudly, ‘am ashamed
of nothing. I have been foolish, yes! wild. Did I not come here, a boy
of twenty-one, from my mother and _Baltimore_ (I wonder what is this
Baltimore, m’sieu?), from all the stupid conventions of a society that
is nothing but _afraid_? _Of course_ I was wild; and the people we know,
who came to Paris, would go back with great tales of my escapades.’
“Monsieur Roger folds his arms suddenly. ‘Julie,’ he says with
earnestness, ‘I am ready to tell you anything--answer any question you
may care to put, about my life here in Paris.’
“Mademoiselle looks frightened--confused. Also she reddens,--she is of a
youth, enchanting!
“‘But, Roger,’ she says timidly, ‘I would not know how to ask you
questions. I----’